1. Field of the Invention
The illustrative exemplary non-limiting implementations disclosed herein generally relate to a game apparatus capable of displaying game objects and producing sounds associated with a plurality of sound generating objects and a method for generating sounds. More specifically, the exemplary implementations disclosed herein relate to a video-graphics gaming method and apparatus, the game apparatus being provided with a mechanism for inputting game operating information and for advancing game play action according to an operation of a controller, and method for displaying a game screen including two or more sound generating game objects, producing sounds associated with the game objects, and a storage medium that stores game sound data and program instructions for generating game object sounds.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Generally, in a game played in a virtual 3D (three-dimensional) space, in a situation where a virtual sound generating object such as, for example, a torch that produces a burning sound when a game character (e.g., a displayed character controlled by a human player) approaches the sound generating object, a process is implemented whereby the burning sound of the torch becomes louder. At this time, if a plurality of torches exist around the game character (in the three-dimensional game space), a plurality of sound generation sources equal to the number of torches around the game character are needed to produce burning sounds of all of the torches. However, in the situation where the number of sound sources that needs to be produced exceeds a maximum number of the sounds capable of being generated simultaneously by the game processor, then the total number of sounds needing to be produced is reduced by purposefully not generating sounds from one or more of the sound generating objects, which may be prioritized, for example, according to the virtual 3D distance from the game character.
Furthermore, in such a game, if the torch exists, for example, at a front oblique right position on the display screen, in order that it is processed as if the sound of the torch were heard from the oblique right, a right volume component of the sound source is increased and a left volume component is decreased. In addition, if the game processor is capable of processing a surround sound component, it is possible to implement a sound generation process in such a manner that generated sounds may be heard as though originating from behind the human operator/player and, thus, the operator/player is “surrounded” by the so generate sounds.
One example of the prior art is disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Laying-open No. 2000-13900 [International classification:H04S 7/00, G10K 15/00] laid-open on Jan. 14, 2000. In a sound reproducing apparatus of this prior art, it is assumed that a position of the head of a listener is the origin and, accordingly, all the arranged sound objects are divided into several groups by a rotating axis that rotates about an axis extending toward a front side of the listener by a predetermined degree, and a sound of one or a plurality of sound object(s) included in each group is generated by using only a single sound producing source.
In a case where the total number of activated sound sources is reduced by assigning a distance based priority scheme, as in the former example, there may be a problem that a sound that is not so important, but rather is to be heard as an ambient sound within a predetermined sound field (virtual three-dimensional space), that sound may become muted. If that happens, a certain liveliness of the game is lost. Furthermore, during game play, when, for example, torches exist on both the right and the left of the game character, if only the sound of the right torch is muted, it feels somewhat strange that only the burning sound from the left torch is heard, irrespective of the existence of both right and left torches.
In addition, in the latter example, in order to determine a direction for dividing the plurality of sound objects, it is necessary to evaluate the angle toward a location or position at which the sounds are to be collected for each of the objects that produce the sounds. Consequently, the number of computations needed for processing sounds from all sound source objects in this case becomes huge, and thus the processing load on the game processor is large. This leads to a problem that unwanted delays in the essential game processing may occur.